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Analog Digital Manual chp 1 — Parallax Forums

Analog Digital Manual chp 1

ArchiverArchiver Posts: 46,084
edited 2004-02-05 04:14 in General Discussion
In this chapter they use a POT, OP AMP, and an LED. Im wondering if you can
vary an LED's brightness with just a POT, VDC, and an LED or do you need the OP
AMP?




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Comments

  • ArchiverArchiver Posts: 46,084
    edited 2004-02-04 19:20
    Yes, you can vary an LED's brightness
    with just a POT. BUT, the next step in
    the lab is to replace the POT with a
    resistor-capacitor combination, charged
    with a software command from the BS2.

    For this command to work, you need to
    have the op-amp there. An op-amp has
    a very high input impedance, so it
    takes very little charge from the
    capacitor, so the capacitor
    can maintain its charge. This is
    the heart of a simple (cheap)
    D to A converter.

    Just so you know, an LED's output is
    usually full on or full off. You can dim
    it by finding that narrow range of currents
    where it is partially on, which is what
    this lab does.

    --- In basicstamps@yahoogroups.com, Jimmy jones <cantyant@y...> wrote:
    > In this chapter they use a POT, OP AMP, and an LED. Im wondering
    if you can vary an LED's brightness with just a POT, VDC, and an LED
    or do you need the OP AMP?
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
    > Do you Yahoo!?
    > Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
    >
    > [noparse][[/noparse]Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
  • ArchiverArchiver Posts: 46,084
    edited 2004-02-05 04:14
    thank you,

    that helps for now, I will need to absorb that.

    Allan Lane <allan.lane@h...> wrote:
    Yes, you can vary an LED's brightness
    with just a POT. BUT, the next step in
    the lab is to replace the POT with a
    resistor-capacitor combination, charged
    with a software command from the BS2.

    For this command to work, you need to
    have the op-amp there. An op-amp has
    a very high input impedance, so it
    takes very little charge from the
    capacitor, so the capacitor
    can maintain its charge. This is
    the heart of a simple (cheap)
    D to A converter.

    Just so you know, an LED's output is
    usually full on or full off. You can dim
    it by finding that narrow range of currents
    where it is partially on, which is what
    this lab does.

    --- In basicstamps@yahoogroups.com, Jimmy jones wrote:
    > In this chapter they use a POT, OP AMP, and an LED. Im wondering
    if you can vary an LED's brightness with just a POT, VDC, and an LED
    or do you need the OP AMP?
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
    > Do you Yahoo!?
    > Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
    >
    > [noparse][[/noparse]Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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